Shopping With Friends
by MadeOfSquirrels
Summary: Iron Man and Thor take Loki shopping in the desperate hope it will install normality in him. Movieverse. Based on a prompt from my boyfriend.


"I don't like this," Thor whispered to Tony as they sauntered casually through the glass doors. "There are far too many opportunities for him to cause problems."

"Hey, the more contact with the public he gets the more he's gonna feel integrated into society," Tony murmured back. "We've got to make him feel part of something, or he's just gonna feel more isolated. And you _know_ how he feels when he's got nobody to adore him."

They both turned at that instance to watch the 'him'. Loki had walked in through the doors, and apparently stopped there, staring at the aisles full of food and goods in what seemed to be awe.

"Or, you know, he could go crazy and blow everything up because he has an audience," Tony added, and Loki almost bounced up to them.

"Capital," he beamed, rubbing his hands together. "So, what are we doing here?"

"We're buying food. We wouldn't normally do this, you know, Jarvis takes care of this stuff, but, you know, we felt you needed some kind of normality in your life-"

"That I wasn't getting in a houseful of psychologically-challenged 'heroes'?" Loki finished, and nodded. "I have the shopping list. Let us go."

* * *

"Loki, it's a kiwi, for Christ's sake," Tony sighed, and Loki stared at the hairy fruit. "A fruit?"

"But… but it has fur," he said, clearly troubled by this half-animal, half-plant. He reached out and picked it up, and then scratched it. An old woman next to him stared in bewilderment, and he looked at her. "Why is it green on the inside?" he asked her, clearly troubled, and she began to edge away. Loki reached out and picked up a banana, turning it over and over in his hands.

"That's a banana," Tony said patiently, and Loki nodded. "You peel it, and, uh, then you eat the inside." Loki nodded, and then carefully peeled it. "Whoa, wait, you have to… you know what? Never mind."

Loki took a tentative bite out of the banana, and then stuck out his tongue in disgust, dropping the banana-skin. In true vaudeville fashion, a shopper passing slipped up on the peel, and Loki's eyes lit up as Tony hustled him out of the aisle.

* * *

Tony had lost them both. One Asgardian loose in a supermarket was bad enough; two, one a psychopathic Jötunn to boot, was definitely going to put a crimp in his day if he didn't find them soon.

"Take _that_, foe!"

"Oh, _yippee_," Tony muttered, and broke into a small run.

He found them both in the gaming section, having attracted a small crowd, and as he forced his way through them he could hear Loki's laugh peal out above the crowd's chatter. This was probably not good.

"What are 'shoulder buttons'?" Thor growled, and Loki smirked, hammering the buttons of the console controller.

"I don't know what a combo is, but mine is currently 157 points long," the trickster taunted, and his pale fingers danced across the buttons. "And… there!" He grinned again. "I appear, dear brother, to have kohd you." He had, indeed, K.O.'d Thor's character in the beat-em-up game they were dominating. "Doesn't _that_ make a pleasant change."

Thor growled under his breath, and the console exploded in a shower of sparks and electricity.

"That is coming out of your pocket money, _young man_," Tony said loudly, and grasped Loki's thin arm. "Come with me, or god or not, I will ground you until Armageddon."

"Ragnarok," Thor corrected as Tony grasped his shoulder and shoved him away from the crowd, who had begun to point and stare.

* * *

"Okay, here, we are buying sausages," Tony explained to Loki, who nodded. "Can you be a big boy and buy some sausages on your own?"

"Must you be so patronising?" Loki asked quietly, and Tony shrugged.

"Could you give the elementary school teacher her hair back?" Loki's eyes narrowed. "Good kid. Go buy them." Loki muttered something under his breath about throwing condescending billionaires out of windows, and smiled at the lady behind the desk.

"Good day," he said politely, and she smiled.

"Oh, you're British!"

"Technically," Loki smiled. "Please may I…"

"Hey, kids doing good. Twenty-five minutes in and nobody's dead, he's not wearing that stupid hat," Tony grinned, and Thor nodded. "We've not been recognised, either, which is a bonus."

"We should do this more often," Thor smiled. "It seems to be doing him good. Maybe he won't have such scorn for mortals now."

"Hey, what's wrong with us?" Tony laughed. "Some of us are pretty damn awesome."

"…maybe I'm free later in the week," they heard Loki say, and both turned to see the blushing woman behind the desk hand him a piece of paper along with his bag of sausages. "Bye, Ellen."

"Did-" Tony said, mouth-hanging open, and Loki opened his palm and looked at the piece of paper.

"Is this some form of communication?" he asked quietly. "I didn't want to appear _rude_-" Only Loki wouldn't want to appear rude after trying to kill everyone on Earth, Stark thought privately. "-but she just said she wanted to give me her number. Is it her house number? It's very long."

"It's a telephone number. What did she mean by giving him her telephone number? Does she know you?" Thor asked, looking at Tony, who belatedly wished he had invited Steve on this delightful little trip.

* * *

Loki looked up and down the toy aisle, and the joy on his face would have been lovely to behold, except to Thor and Tony, who had prior experience of that smile. That smile meant that somebody was probably going to die. If they heard anything beginning with 'bow', they would simply rugby tackle him and pretend he was drunk, they privately decided.

"And you say there are shops dedicated to these?" Loki said, taking an action figure off of the shelf. He pressed the button, and a tinny voice shouted, '_Stand and fight, dog!_' He placed it down, and picked up a toy car that made 'vroom' noises as he pushed it along the shelf. "Entire _shops_?"

"Yeah," Tony said, picking up a Captain America doll and privately vowing to make a small part of Steve's life hell with it, "but you can't play with them all."

There was a cough from Thor, and Tony realised belatedly that Loki might, and had, construed this as a challenge. The Asgardian sorcerer raised his right hand, and gave an almost beatific grin. Then he clicked his fingers. Tony and Thor had the sense, at this point, to run.

Every toy in the aisle sprung to life at that moment, in a cacophonous riot of movement and colour and sound. Toy cars strained against their packaging, an entire tub of bouncy balls came thundering out of their container, and a hula hoop, like so many wheels in a comedy crash scene, went rolling past the end of the aisle. An entire rack full of Barbies began throwing themselves like lemmings off a shelf.

"Do we go in and get him?" Thor shouted at Tony, who shook his head.

"Get who?" someone asked from behind them, and Loki was there, looking concerned. "Somebody has caused quite a riot, haven't they?"

* * *

"Overall, more interesting than shopping with Steve, but also much more likely to cause another heart attack," Tony said as they left. He carried three bags of shopping, Thor bearing at least six – and Loki had armfuls of bananas, dropping a few every time he took a staggering step down towards the car park. There was a joyous, almost child-like joy on his face that boded ill for others. "Do you think those will keep him happy?" Tony continued, and Thor shrugged.

"I'm more concerned about us," he sighed.


End file.
